How-to: Bus Pirate V1, Improved Universal Serial Interface

January 22, 2009 by 65 Comments

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We use the Bus Pirate to interface a new chip without writing code or designing a PCB. Based on your feedback, and our experience using the original Bus Pirate to demonstrate various parts, we updated the design with new features and cheaper components.

There’s also a firmware update for both Bus Pirate hardware versions, with bug fixes, and a PC AT keyboard decoder. Check out the new Hack a Day Bus Pirate page, and browse the Bus Pirate source code in our Google code SVN repository.

We cover the design updates and interface a digital to analog converter below.

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Parts: 1-Wire Temperature Sensor (DS1822)

December 10, 2008 by 18 Comments

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Download: buspirate.v0d.zip

Dallas/Maxim’s 1-Wire protocol is the most requested addition to the Bus Pirate.  We finally got some 1-Wire parts, and today we’ll demonstrate the DS1822 1-Wire digital thermometer. Grab the datasheet (PDF) and follow along.

This post is accompanied by release v.0d of the Bus Pirate firmware for hardware version 0. This includes the new 1-Wire protocol library, more configuration options, and other improvements.

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Bus Pirate Firmware Update (v.0c), JTAG And More

December 1, 2008 by 31 Comments

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Download: buspirate.v0c.zip

A few weeks ago we wrote about our Bus Pirate universal serial interface tool. We used the recent holiday to add some new features, like a JTAG programmer, macros, frequency measurement, and more. A major code reorganization makes everything easier to read and update.

Check out the a demonstration of the new features below. We’re compiling a roadmap and wish list, so share your ideas in the comments. You can also see how we used the Bus Pirate to read a smart card and test-drive an I2C crystal oscillator.

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How-to: The Bus Pirate, Universal Serial Interface

November 19, 2008 by 60 Comments

UPDATE: New firmware with JTAG and more

We’re always excited to get a new chip or SIM card to interface, but our enthusiasm is often dampened by the prototyping process. Interfacing any chip usually means breadboarding a circuit, writing code, and hauling out the programmer; maybe even a prototyping PCB.

A few years ago we built the first ‘Bus Pirate’, a universal bus interface that talks to most chips from a PC serial terminal. Several standard serial protocols are supported at 3.3-5volts, including I2C, SPI, and asynchronous serial. Additional ‘raw’ 2- and 3- wire libraries can interface almost any proprietary serial protocols. Since this has been such a useful tool for us, we cleaned up the code, documented the design, and released it here with specs, schematic, and source code.

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